Belligerent Saudi Regime kicking their American “Friends” and “Partners” to the Curb?

Saudi-US Row: Prince Bandar bin ‘Sulking’ Tries Old Bribe and Threat Trick Again
Finian Cunningham – 24 October, 2013 – Strategic Culture

Historic allies, the United States and Saudi Arabia, are in the midst of a full-blown row, after the kingdom’s spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan threatened that their strategic liaison was on the rocks.

The sulking sultan is no stranger to maverick mood swings. But there is good reason to believe that the senior Saudi is not merely acting alone, and that this is the obscurantist kingdom’s way of expressing strategic frustrations…

Rumbling tensions over various geopolitical issues have now erupted into full public glare when Prince Bandar briefed invited unnamed Western diplomats to his majlis at the Red Sea city of Jeddah last weekend. The purpose was for the Saudi royal to vent his anger over recent «disappointments» caused by Washington’s policies in the Middle East.

«This message is for the US», said Bandar, who was formerly Saudi ambassador in Washington.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Saudi intelligence chief told diplomats that the kingdom was now seeking other strategic allies, without specifying just who these new partners might be. Whether a full break with Washington will come to pass is moot, but the fact that the more than eight decades of staunch alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia is being dangled in the wind shows that there are deep misgivings and high stakes over recent geopolitical developments.

Arm-twisting tactics by Prince Bandar are nothing new. Earlier this summer the Saudi spymaster tried to cajole Russian President Vladimir Putin to ditch Moscow’s historic alliance with Syria. Bandar, who is also known as «Bandar Bush» owing to close ties to the Washington establishment, attempted to inveigle Putin then with a mixture of bribes and threats.

During the private meeting with the Russian leader Bandar reportedly offered Russia lucrative oil and gas contracts in the Middle East and hinted that he could ensure security for the forthcoming Sochi Winter Olympic Games by exerting his influence on Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups. To his credit, the Russian president gave his Saudi guest short shrift over the unseemly proposal.

The recent weekend confab in Jeddah between Prince Bandar and Western diplomats followed the extraordinary move by Saudi Arabia to reject a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. That seat had been much coveted by the Saudis and had been offered after lobbying from Washington. The Saudi snap rejection was therefore a calculated snub to Washington.

Officially, the Saudis endeavored to cloak that decision with high-minded principle, claiming that it was a protest over the Security Council’s inability to defend the rights of Palestinians, create a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, and failure to sanction the «Damascus regime» of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Nobody is buying that self-righteous, stilted rhetoric. Saudi Arabia has shown little interest in defending the historic rights of the Palestinians under relentless Israeli expansionism, and the kingdom is one of the main purveyors of (non-nuclear) weapons of mass destruction in the Mid-East, if not the entire world.

The real reason for the Saudi chagrin with its American patron is the latter’s failure to launch an all-out military assault on Syria last month, when Russian diplomacy secured a chemical weapons decommissioning deal to avert American aggression. The other major related factor for the Saudi spat with Washington is the latter’s new diplomatic overture to Iran in their ongoing nuclear dispute. …more